Blue had been rather careful returning home.She’d showered again after her shower with Vincent. Blow-dried and styled her hair so it hadn’t looked like she had. Redressed quietly. Paid for her fare home with cash. By the time she made it back to Richards, it was a quarter to six. She was cutting it awfully close.Letting herself in through the front door, cursing the loudness of her keys, she realized painfully that she hadn’t yet organized her excuse. Could she say that she spent the night at her parent’s? Would he ask Bradley, or trust his Fiancé? Would it hurt his feelings to discover the truth of her night? He had seemed to be rather pure of heart the more she’d come to know him. And yet some part of her feared the Richard who discovered his wife’s transgression. Would he strike her? Cast her to the streets? Declare her the whore she was? Or embrace her? Assure her they could get through this? Stroke her

Stood alone in the room she felt quite filthy for ever admiring, Blue came to realize just how much she had to pack. She’d taken far too many clothes from her mother’s house; more toiletries than she could ever use. Rather, she hadn’t a clue how to pack her own suitcase. Google had told her to roll her clothes. She just couldn’t fold them right. Stacked against one another, odd bunches of fabric splayed from the ends of each log, she decided she’d be better off trying to stuff it all together as she had the first time. This time she would succeed—if only in thanks of pure determination. “Just where do you think you’re going?” Peering up from her wadded clothes, she met the gaze of the woman she’d decided she’d least rather see. Sandra. She felt rather stupid for ever regarding the woman an ally. Felt a familiar guilt for considering leaving what simple life s

Blue had been staring into her coffee cup for quite some time. It had been days since she’d last seen Vincent. The numbness that had spread from her chest to her fingertips made her consider whether she was suffering withdrawal. Her breakfast had no taste. Making sense of the words neatly printed in her current read was an impossible task. The television had bored her. She’d grown tired of watching cars pass in the street. Yet she found joy in the rippling of her tea as someone shuffled about upstairs. Wondered if Vincent saw the same light rolling and breaking on the surface of her stained water in his shaving basin. Whether he hadn’t the mind to look.   As her maid mounted the first step of the staircase, she watched the woman buckle in place. Turn to face her in her peripheral. Finally, Blue felt her curiosity ignite, her minute enthusiasm so foreign. Glancing up, she met Anya’s gaze. Smiled a small that stopped just short of her eyes. Lost her inter

Blue hadn’t moved since she’d spoken to Anya, sat at the dining table. And as some dark figure danced in the corner of her eye, she hoped it would be her maid again. But hoping had never gotten her far. “Blue?” She turned to meet her father’s voice—though didn’t oblige him the same forced smile she had her maid. She didn’t feel he deserved it quite as much. “I thought you would have been out with Sandra,” “What are you doing here?” The question sounded about as pointed as she had felt it should. No longer did she entertain the obligation to reign in any bitterness. Fortune had treated her rather cruelly of late. Why should she entertain notions of the male gaze and the so-called etiquette it masqueraded as? As far as she was concerned, the notion of femininity she’d been raised to prize had disappeared when her fiancé had cut open her cheek as one would an a

Stepping into the backyard it had been years since she’d ventured into, her childhood somehow had never felt further. Despite the midnight sky bearing down on her with the weight of hot, stifling tar, she never felt more naked than she had stumbling down the sheared grass hill. Part of her was so sure the last few weeks had been a strange hyper-realistic fever dream. That she’d wake in a hot sweat on Vincent’s chest. She would have fallen asleep under the sheets on a particularly hot night. Nightmares had plagued for hours that had felt like days until she finally shook from its fugue… Yet the further she delved into what memories of Michael she had always thought insignificant, the more it made sense.   He had been there for all her major events; her first day of school, her social debut, her graduation… he’d congratulated her engagement before her own father had—though Bradley had seemed rather smug in his own way. She’d been far too consumed in her t